6 november

At the end of the third floor hallway, there were two doors. The door on the right was heavy, with a thick leathery pad, and lovely gold numbers: 302. The door on the left had no number, just a centered peephole seeming to split the thin, warped wood. One guess which door was mine. Right. Clearly left.

As the front desk lady fiddled ineffectually with the key, in a process I later discovered was actually a highly cost-effective security system disguised as a cheap lock, I leaned on what would reveal itself to be a white-washed wall (most likely part of the same security system, somehow), heavy with the weight of anxious anticipation. The very length of the preceding sentence should indicate to you the complexity of this situation, should you ever have taken a literary analysis class. Have you read any classic Russian literature? Come on.

When the door opened, releasing an exasperated sigh from my colleague and a waft of vintage must from the apartment, the nervous front door lady tottered in, exchanged a few words with herself, and disappeared back to the heat of her first-floor office. My colleague, Natalia, affixed what seemed to me to be a skeptical expression, and stepped inside.

5 november

Riding on a train, on the lower berth, in the aisle. Can’t sleep, for whatever reason. Maybe it’s the slight amount of light that never gets turned off in these platskart vahons, these second—third?—class cars. Maybe I’m wondering why I’ve decided to take a 9-hour train for what will most likely be a super-short doctor’s appointment and an errand or two totaling an hour or three, then turn around and take the next 9-hour train right back. Genius. Inspiration. Also, the lack of funds to spend on overnight accommodation in the shining city on a hill that is my host nation’s capital.

I roll, twist, curl. Despite the warm air, I still like to be covered. My feet don’t, though, so they unwrap themselves from the damp sheet in somewhat unnecessary defiance. The two girls across from me chattering quietly don’t seem to notice the unnecessarily rude stance my feet have adopted. The snores from the bunks above them don’t seem to care, either. I squeeze my eyes shut, following the example.

The train rumbles on, as it is wont to do. One and then another sleep traveler stumbles down the corridor, toward the bathroom or out for a smoke break. Suddenly, my eyes fly open as I feel a warm liquid on my feet. I see one stumbler heading past, unsteadily aiming for the far end of the car.

So gross, I think, instantly certain that this man is drunk and has spilled his beer on me. I reach down in the murky dark to touch and smell for certain, but this is not the smell of beer, and suddenly I am wide awake and reaching for my glasses. I lean to inspect my feet, ankles, sheets, and then the floor… Noticing that the trail leads from one end of the car to the other, I am disturbed, and noticeably so, even in the dark. The two girls have stopped chatting and are staring at me, the floor, the sheets.

4 november

My current thought is to use this process as a processing—that is, to share my experiences in Ukraine with you, yes, but also to think through them myself in order to consider what I’ve learned, and to consider some Big Questions. I don’t mean for this to sound totally selfish. I also have no intention of being preachy, or of writing a book that offers to serve as ‘self-help’ to any but its own author. Still, given the opportunity to reflect, so I will.

I’d like to reflect, to collect, and to connect. There are stories that happened to me that have happened to plenty of others, and stories that never have and never will happen to anyone else. These are stories that give us the chance to see ourselves in another culture, and to wonder what makes us believe what we believe and to act the way we act. This is the chance to answer questions, and to pose further questions. It’s true that I’m interested in the personal, but the chance that you’ll relate, too, makes me want to share the process with you.

There, now, I’m explaining. This is what happens when poets get carried away. Fiction is one thing, but creative nonfiction? And this isn’t even creative—this is just lots of telling, and no showing!

On with the show!

3 november

Today I went to a meeting. I drove almost an hour and a half to get to a two hour meeting of an organization that does not exist. (While it’s also true that I spent most of the afternoon shopping with no money, as well, in an unanticipated exercise in further irony, this is a wholly separate story involving Trader Joe’s, a fire alarm, and free cookies.)

Why did I do this? (Not ‘why did I eat the free cookies’ [technically just one, really]—get out of the parentheses, and out of the brackets, too, for that matter.) Why did I go to this meeting? Community.

This is not about to be a speech. I’m not getting up on my soapbox.

Anyway, it’s a book.

And I don’t have a soapbox, either.

And why a soapbox, really? Don’t other things come in boxes? Why didn’t holier-than-thou lecturers ever decide to stand on lima bean crates, or thread bins? Yes, every Student of English as a Second or Foreign Language ever, the English language is fascinatingly distracting and question-provoking.

Ahem.

2 november

Waiting for the applause that must surely follow

Waiting to adopt hope

Any hope, with hope of growth

Holding close a pitying smile

Sometimes it’s better to be

Fully foolish in front of strangers

Or near unknowns

Those with no way to measure

No tools to tell

To titter, totteringly

Even as I fall

One fell swoop

1 november

The way I translated it was this:

You should know that it was in the living room, also the dining room and sometimes bedroom—meaning they were the same room. It was after a lunch that might have been breakfast. We were always eating, sitting down, waiting for food that didn’t need to come, but came anyway, and we were appreciative. What could you do? It was the nicest thing they could do, and they were the nicest people.

The big table was out, all the leaves in. The cakes were piled up in two glass stands of arrayed overwhelm, paired goblets for a greedy giant. Every so often somebody would reach for a piece of cake and everyone else would watch, nod, comment. When you’re so full, the rest of the table has to eat for you.

The light is important to remember. The curtains were never open the whole way. Maybe there was a reason I never thought about. Maybe it was to keep neighbors passing on the road to keep passing and not stopping to stare in at those foreign relatives visiting, wherever they’re from anyway, I heard it’s Canada.

The story comes from nowhere, though it is a time when my father is visiting and they are always happy to tell him stories. They know he’s looking, and listening. I try, they know, but the chance of correctly interpreting a dozen energized relatives in exchange with one story-ravelling, joke-telling, actor/ journalist/ communicator extraordinaire is a little rough.

It looks like this:

Where does the name ‘Krut’ come from? Where does the first Krut come from?

This is the plunge into myth, the spin into certainty that these are my people and this is my story:

Long ago, a man, possibly a German, wandered in a dark forest for many, many days. He was lost, and traveled in circles. He could not find his way out, for the forest was dense and confusing. Finally, he was found by a priest. The priest took care of the man, helped him, and gave him a name—Krut, for krutyty, which means ‘to spin sharply’, for all of the turning around that the man had been doing in the forest.

Could such a story be true? Its simplicity, complete lack of proof or development, and the vague delivery--? When asked, the teller laughed and shrugged. “Chomy v ni?” he asked. Why not?